Tom Yardley-Jones designed The Leisure Hive, the rst new Doctor Who story of the 1980s. The experience proved far from leisurely, as he explained in this previously unpublished interview conducted in 1995. “You’re never 100 per cent happy,” he said, “but always striving for better…”

Interview by PHIL NEWMAN

”Doctor Who was a bit of a challenge for anybody, but it was classed as a lovely thing to be asked to do,” remembered designer Tom Yardley-Jones, who came to the BBC by a roundabout route. “I studied architecture in North Wales, then later moved to London, designing restaurants, banqueting rooms etc, earning fantastic money, and then went to Canada for six months. I came back wanting to do something completely different. I was really interested in film - I wanted to be a cameraman. Then I happened to see the BBC advertising for holiday relief designers.” Initially, Tom was on a temporary six-month contract. “They kept renewing, and after a year and a half they gave me a Top of the Pops to do as my first show, which was really scary.

In 1975, Tom found himself assisting designer Nigel Curzon (see page 34) on Terror of the Zygons, directed by Douglas Camfield. One of his first tasks on arrival at the West Sussex location was to paint a sign for the Fox Inn, in the fictional Scots village of Tulloch. “I went down, measured up the sign, did it, then one of the cameramen said, ‘Douglas, shouldn’t it read Tulloch with an h? It’s been spelt with a k!’ I said, ‘I’m sure it said Tullock in the script!’ We frantically checked and it said Tulloch, so we tried to dirty it down and hide it. That was before all the hassles in the studio…”